Thursday, October 11, 2007

Shit happens: pooponaplane.com.

Our crisis comms expert Brendan is relating the sad tale of Continental Airlines Flight 1669Y, where a citizen journalist was on hand to file the story of "poop running down the aisles."

Most bad news gets onto social media sites now before the mainstream media get their act together, Brendan notes, and it will usually be updated far more regularly there too and of course, has the potential to remain available for viewing for a much longer period.

And yet it remains the case that "the reputation of the media is made during crises," so the way journalists interact with so-called gotcha stories emerging online is very relevant to us.

I was once a Continental Flight with a bust bog too. The steward eventually solved the problem by pouring about twenty coffee jugs-worth of water down the hole. Fortunately, no cerotes became mobile.

The day's programme is almost done and I have survived the challenge posed by that big tray of chocolate brownies. It's a real shame we missed the presentation from author David M. Scott during our airport excursion, but he has kindly given a copy of his book on The New Rules of PR to every delegate and Niall blogged about it on Collective Conversation.